Varijashree Venugopal celebrates 25 years of musical journey

Musician Varijashree Venugopal's 25 years of musicology was celebrated with a thanksgiving concert Abhivandanam. The Carnatic vocalist-composer-flautist returned with a performance to Bangalore Gayana Samaja on Wednesday where she had her first full-fledged classical concert way back in 1998 on May 17. The special performance featured artists Mattur Srinidhi (violin), BC Manjunath (Mridangam), G Guruprasanna (Khanjira), Pramath Kiran (Tabla), Praveen D Rao (Harmonium) and Vivek Santosh (Keys) and was attended by colleagues, and close friends and family, who were also present at her debut concert.

While musician has several albums to her credit, she says her upcoming sixth album is her first original, for which she has written and composed music. For the project, the singer-flautist has collaborated with American composer and multi-instrumentalist Michael League, who plays bass for the band Snarky Puppy.
Comprising 11 tracks, the untitled album features over 40 instrumentalists and is expected to release later this year. In an earlier interaction, she had said,“Most of the instruments used in the album are Indian so as to create ethnic and traditional sounds. We have used everything from the tabla, veena, mrudangam, thavil, and shehnai to dholak, tamate and dollu. Here you won’t see them in the regular context that you get to hear them in. All the traditional sounds of Indian classical and folk music are brought in which is later layered with a few synthesizers. We are excited to see how it all comes together.”